By this past Monday evening,
the quiet campus community of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg
Virginia was reeling from the events which transpired just hours
earlier. Twice that morning, gunfire rang out to create what has
become the worst mass shooting in US history. By Tuesday
morning, television anchors, reporters and crews were stationed
all across the campus, at times interviewing each other.

Tuesday afternoon, the
President and Mrs. Bush arrived to share services at the
university and blame and finger-pointing will be filling the
airwaves for months to come. Yet, as the immediacy of the pain,
grief and shock slowly passes from our collective consciousness,
the pain of the families who have lost loved ones will remain.
Our condolences go out to these family members as we grieve
their losses with them. Our hearts also go out to those family
members of the wounded who are dealing with the sudden changes
in their lives and the lives of their children who were hurt in
this horrific act.

Nobody knows better than a
family caregiver about the things that can happen in the blink
of an eye to change our expectations about our own lives and the
promise of our loved ones future. This is never as painful as
when it happens during inexplicable acts of terror and to our
young. In a brutal coincidence, Friday we remember the victims
of the Columbine massacre which occurred on April 20th, 1999.